Leader & Politician on Pitara Kids Network

Subhas Chandra Bose: The first man to set up a government of free India

Thu, 14 May 2020 18:28:31 +0000

Subhas Chandra Bose (1867 to 1945):

Can the enemy of your enemy be your friend? Would you ask your enemy’s enemy for help even if they had done things that were terrible?

The famous Indian freedom fighter, Subhas Chandra Bose made this troubling choice in his fight to liberate India of British rule during World War II. He reached out to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in order to fight against British rule. He did not live to see India gain independence.

B.R. Ambedkar: Father of the Indian Constitution

Sun, 24 May 2020 18:30:00 +0000

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891 – 1956):

The slogan “Jai Bhim” is a salute to the man who spent his life fighting for the rights of the weakest citizens of India. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar is remembered as the father of the Indian Constitution.

The Constitution of India is a guiding light for the values that should govern India. After independence, the responsibility of leading the task of writing the Constitution was given to Ambedkar. He was India’s first Minister of Law and Justice and fought tirelessly against social discrimination of India’s poorest minority class.

Bhagat Singh

Sat, 10 Mar 2001 00:01:46 +0000

March 23 is the death anniversary of one of the most heroic figures of the Indian freedom movement. Few people remembered it, though. Forget the rest of India, even the children of the village where he was born, do not know anything about him.

And to think that the young man in question, Bhagat Singh, gave up his life for the ideal of a free and better India! Today, over 50 years after Independence, the people of his village still do not have access to drinking water and a tap, writes The Indian Express newspaper.

Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi

Sun, 18 Nov 2001 05:47:10 +0000

Thinker, statesman and nationalist leader, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi not only led his own country to independence but also influenced political activists of many persuasions throughout the world with his methods and philosophy of nonviolent confrontation, or civil disobedience.

Born in Porbandar in Gujarat on October 2, 1869, his actions inspired the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore to call him “Mahatma” (“great soul”). For him, the universe was regulated by a Supreme Intelligence or Principle, which he preferred to call satya (Truth) and, as a concession to convention, God.

Indira Gandhi

Mon, 11 Sep 2000 19:11:16 +0000

Indira Gandhi, née Indira Priyadarshini Nehru (1917-1984), was born on November 19, 1917, in Allahabad, the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. A graduate of Visva-Bharati University, Bengal, she also studied at the University of Oxford, England. In 1938 she joined the National Congress party and became active in India’s independence movement. In 1942 she married Feroze Gandhi, a Parsi lawyer also active in the party. Shortly after, both were arrested by the British on charges of subversion and spent 13 months in prison. When India won its independence in 1947 and Nehru took office as prime minister, Gandhi became his official hostess. (Her mother had died in 1936.) She also served as his confidante on national problems and accompanied him on foreign trips.

Dalai Lama

Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:45:12 +0000

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet was born in 1935, soon after the 13th Dalai Lama passed away. He was the fourth son of a poor peasant family in Takster village, Amdo province in eastern Tibet. The line of Dalai Lamas, spiritual and temporal rulers of Tibet since the 13th century, is a succession of incarnations. In accordance with tradition, search parties were sent to find the successor to the thirteenth Dalai Lama. Two years later, following the various signs and portents, a government party was led to Takster, where they found the infant Lhamo Thondup. After a series of tests, the child (later named Tenzin Gyatso) was recognized as the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama.

Nelson Mandela

Fri, 01 Jun 2001 04:55:26 +0000

Nelson Rohihlahla Mandela, b. July 18, 1918, was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Trained as an attorney, he helped form the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944. In 1961 he abandoned peaceful protest and became head of the ANC’s new military wing. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, Mandela came to symbolize black political aspirations and was named head of the ANC after his release on Feb. 11, 1990. He and F. W. de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating South Africa’s peaceful transition to multiracial democracy. After the ANC victory in the April 1994 elections, Mandela worked to ease racial tensions, court foreign investment, and provide services to the victims of apartheid.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Wed, 25 Oct 2000 03:57:13 +0000

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was a powerful voice on behalf of a wide range of social causes including youth employment and civil rights for blacks and women. The wife of a popular U.S. president, Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 11, 1884 was a tireless worker for social causes. A niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she was raised by her maternal grandmother after the premature death of her parents. In 1905, she married her cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt; they had six children, one of whom died in infancy. Although extremely shy, she became active in politics after her husband was stricken with polio in 1921.

Ho Chi Minh

Sat, 22 Apr 2000 12:44:00 +0000

Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietnam revolutionary nationalist party of Indo-China, which struggled for independence from France during and after the second world war, was born Nguyen Sinh Cung on May 19, 1890 in a village in central Vietnam. The French through a puppet emperor indirectly ruled the area during that time. Inheriting his father’s rebellious bent, Ho participated in a series of tax revolts, acquiring a reputation as a troublemaker. In 1911 he left Vietnam to work abroad. Toward the end of World War I he went to France where he joined the Socialist Party. In 1919 at Paris Peace conference, he unsuccessfully agitated for civil rights in Indo-China. Rebuffed, Ho joined the newly created French Communist Party and visited the USSR to study revolutionary methods. Soon Ho was roaming the earth as a covert agent for Moscow.

Pop John Paul II

Thu, 23 Sep 1999 15:58:51 +0000

Pope John Paul II is the first Polish pope and the first non-Italian pope since the 16th century. Born Karol Josef Wojtyla on May 18, 1920, to a Polish army officer in Wadowice in Poland, John Paul II attended an underground seminary during the World War II German occupation and was ordained a priest in 1946. After studying in Rome and at the University of Krakow, he was appointed professor of ethics at the University of Lublin in 1956. Here, he published the first of many articles and books on philosophical and theological themes. Consecrated bishop in 1958, he served first as auxiliary bishop of Krakow and in 1964 became archbishop of Krakow. He was made a cardinal in 1967 and was elected pope on October 16, 1978, succeeding John Paul I. During his pontificate he has traveled more extensively than any of his predecessors, preaching to millions of people on six continents and in more than 50 nations.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Sun, 04 Feb 2001 15:28:27 +0000

Fidel Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926 (some sources give 1927), on his family’s sugar plantation near Biran, Oriente, Province. His father was an immigrant from Galcia, Spain. He attended good Cathotic schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana, where he took the spartan regime at a Jesuit boarding school, Colegio de Belen. In 1945 he enrolled at the University of Havana, graduating in 1950 with a law degree. In 1948, he married Mirta Diaz-Balart and divorced her in 1954. Their son, Fidel Castro Ruz Diaz-Balart, born in 1949, has served as head of Cuba’s atomic energy commission.

Lech Walesa

Wed, 17 May 2000 23:33:20 +0000

Born to a family of peasant farmers on Sept 23, 1943 in Popowo in Poland, Lech Walesa started of as an electrician at shipyard in Gdansk. A devout Roman Catholic, he was shocked by the repression of workers’ protests and made inroads with small opposition groups. Despite being sacked from his job, he climbed over the perimeter wall of the Lenin shipyard at the age of 37 to join the occupation strike. With his electrifying personality, quick wit and gift of the gab, he was soon leading it. He moved his fellow workers away from mere wage claims towards a daring political demand: free trade unions. When Polish communists agreed to this, the new union was christened Solidarnosc (solidarity). Soon it had 10 million members and he became the undisputed leader of the Solidarity. For 16 months they struggled to find a way to co-exist with the Communist state, under the constant threat of Soviet invasion. In 1981 martial law was declared and Walesa was jailed for 11 months and then released.

Mao Zedong

Thu, 30 Mar 2000 05:19:58 +0000

Mao Zedong was chairman of the Communist Party of China and the principal founder of the People’s Republic of China. Along with Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin, he is regarded as one of the three great theorists of Marxian communism. Mao’s greatest achievements were the unification of China through the destruction of Nationalist power, the creation of a unified People’s Republic, and the leadership of the greatest social revolution in human history. This revolution involved collectivisation of most land and property, the destruction of the landlord class, the weakening of the urban bourgeoisie, and the elevation of the status of peasants and industrial workers. As a Marxist thinker and the leader of a socialist state, Mao gave theoretical legitimacy to the continuation of class struggle in the socialist and communist stages of development. Although Mao was criticized after his death for the failure of his economic policies and the revolutionary excesses of his later years, his basic foreign policy was continued and his theories, particularly those on the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, remained influential in the nonindustrialised Third World.

Vladimir Ilich Lenin

Sun, 06 Dec 1998 20:46:34 +0000

Vladimir Ilich Lenin, founder of the Russian Communist party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and first head of state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was also a masterly political thinker whose theories shaped Communist thought and influenced all factions of the Marxist movement.

Lenin was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov on April 22, 1870, in the provincial city of Simbirsk on the Volga River. By all accounts, Lenin’s middle-class family was warm and loving. Lenin’s father was a secondary-school teacher who rose to become a provincial director of elementary education.

Ronald Reagan

Fri, 30 Apr 1999 01:31:32 +0000

Ronald Wilson Reagan was elected the 40th president of the United States on November 4, 1980. At the age of 69, he was the oldest man and the first movie star ever sworn into that office. During his two terms in office, the popular president helped raise the nation’s spirits. He also oversaw the creation of large budget and trade deficits and ultimately effected a historical truce in cold war with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Born on February 6, 1911in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan worked his way through Eureka college, had some success as a sportscaster and began an acting career with Warner Bros. in 1937. He was to appear in 53 films with an interlude in the US army. He married actress Jane Wyman in 1940, divorced in 1948 and in 1952 wed Nancy Davis. He moved into television in the 1950s and became the popular host of ‘Death Valley Days’ and spokesman for General Electric Company. Inheriting from his father a orientation in politics, Reagan shifted his views and spoke out against ‘big govt’ and Communism. By the 1960s he was a favorite Conservative speaker.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Thu, 17 Aug 2000 19:59:21 +0000

The 35th president of United States (1961-63) was at the age of 43, the youngest and the first Roman Catholic to be elected to the presidency. Rich, handsome, elegant and articulate, he aroused great admiration at home and abroad. His assassination in Dallas, Texas in November 1963 provoked outrage and widespread mourning. His term of office as president was too short.

Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917, a descendant of Irish Catholics who had immigrated to America in the 19th century. He had worldwide pre-eminence and gave the American people a sense of purpose to meet the challenges of a scientific age.

Mikhail Gorbachev

Wed, 31 Mar 1999 04:52:08 +0000

He was born in Privol’noye, Russia. In 1985 Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party, and in 1988 he became president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Between 1985 and 1990, Gorbachev sought to reform Soviet society by introducing perestroika (restructuring) of the economy and glasnost’ (openness) in political and cultural affairs. He transferred power from the Communist Party to popularly elected legislatures in the union republics. Gorbachev also withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan, normalized relations with China, signed a series of arms control agreements with the United States, and cooperated with the U.S.-led effort to oust Iraq from Kuwait. Gorbachev allowed former Soviet-bloc countries in Eastern Europe to oust their Communist regimes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

Bill Clinton

Tue, 14 Mar 2000 20:41:20 +0000

Born on August 19, 1946 in Hope, Arkansas, to Virginia Blythe and named for his father, who had recently died in an auto accident, William Jefferson Blythe was reared from the age of seven in Hot Springs, Ark.. He took his stepfather’s last name Clinton, after the birth of a stepbrother. After high school he went to Georgetown University, University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and Yale University Law School where he met his future wife Hillary Rodham.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

Fri, 06 Aug 1999 21:12:22 +0000

The Ayatollah (Arabic, “Reflection of Allah”) Ruhollah Khomeini became leader of Iran in 1979 by forcing the overthrow of the shah and Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar. Born in Khomein, Iran on May 27, 1900, the son of an ayatollah of the Shiite sect, he studied theology and by 1962 was one of the six grand ayatollahs of Iran’s Shiite Muslims. Exiled in 1964 for his part in religious demonstrations against the shah, he was expelled from Iraq in 1978 and moved to France, where he emerged as the leader of the anti-shah movement. In January 1979, after the shah left Iran, he returned to lead the country, becoming faqih (supreme religious guide) for life of Iran’s Islamic republic in December.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Wed, 06 Sep 2000 07:40:15 +0000

Roosevelt served longer than any other president and held office during two great crises: the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II (1939-1945). Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York. In 1899 he entered Harvard College, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1903. In 1904 Roosevelt moved to New York City, where he entered the Columbia University Law School. While at Columbia, Roosevelt married his distant cousin Eleanor Roosevelt. Although he attended classes until 1907, he did not stay on for his law degree after passing the state examinations allowing him to practice law. For the next three years he was a clerk in a prominent law firm in New York City.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

Mon, 20 Dec 1999 16:00:55 +0000

Churchill was born on November 30, 1874 in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England. His father Randolph Churchill was the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. As a young man of undistinguished academic accomplishment, he entered the army as a cavalry officer. He took enthusiastically to soldiering and managed to see three campaigns. He served as a cavalry officer in India and Sudan but resigned his commission in 1899 to become a war correspondent in the Boer war. Send to cover the South African war for the Morning Post, the Boers captured him in 1899. A daring escape from the prison made him an overnight celebrity.

Margaret Hilda Thatcher

Sat, 12 Aug 2000 12:22:40 +0000

Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham. She married Denis Thatcher in 1951. Thatcher was elected to the House of Commons in 1959. After the Conservative defeat in 1974 she won leadership of the party the following year. In 1979 she led the Conservatives to victory, vowing to reverse Britain’s economic decline and to reduce the role of government. In 1982 Argentine forces occupied the Falkland Islands, which were claimed by both Argentina and the United Kingdom. The British military defeated the Argentine military. She led the Conservatives to further victories in the 1983 and 1987 parliamentary elections, becoming the first British prime minister in the 20th century to serve three consecutive terms.